Alone & Afraid

Man, what an incredible day to be in church today. Thank you. All of you that are joining us here in person. Those of you that are streaming in online. if you aren’t checking out online, we hope that eventually you’ll be able to come here and join us in person and get to know a little bit more about our church. If this is your first time here, or maybe you’ve been coming a couple of weeks and Ben and I haven’t had a chance to meet you, we will be right through those doors over there after the service. Over by the coffee area. We’d love to shake your hand. thank you for being here. And then maybe even learn a little bit more about what led you here today.

But man, isn’t God good. Amen. And we’re all, like, bright eyed and bushy tailed this morning. Amen. Right. I’m so thankful for this church and so many of you that sent me text messages, email and you posted on my social media feeds that I get an extra hour to preach this morning. I know that’s why you’re here. God is good. And what a better way to start Sunday, the best day of the week than by opening our Bibles and letting God speak into our hearts and letting God speak into our lives. And if you’re new to chapter six, that’s basically what we’re in, is a series of messages in the book of Genesis. And today we have 11 verses, just 11 verses to go through as we’ve been following the narrative of some characters that lived a long time ago.

But yet what we keep finding out is they go through the same struggles, or they went through the same struggles and the same hardships that you and I go through today. But thanks be to God. You can always see the way in which God Number one, is weaving his perfect will into their lives, even when they screw up over and over again. And number two, the way that he really, truly does love us and redeems us and calls us his own and forgives us over and over and over again. If you haven’t been here, this is really what the themes of Ben. They’ve been kind of dysfunctional. We’ve been talking about how dysfunctional people are, how toxic they can be. more often than not, the characters in Scripture, they keep becoming impatient with God.

God makes them a promise. They get tired of waiting on God to fulfill the promise. So then they take matters into their own hands and end up blowing up their lives and their families. even allowing false gods to come in and invade their space, whether that be through their financial gains or through other means. They begin to worship things that they shouldn’t worship. They get their attention and their focus off of God and His purpose and plan for their lives. And there’s been a whole lot of deceit. Deceiving lovers. Would you say that those that have been through this with us. I mean, every week somebody’s cheating, stealing, lying. I mean, it’s just kind of incredible. We always like to say. I mean, you can’t find a better reality show than you can in the book of Genesis.

I don’t care what you watch on Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, the Bible is where it’s at. In fact, I would encourage you watch less of those shows and get more into Scripture because all Scripture is God breathed and Scripture actually has the power to change and transform your life. Not Netflix, not Hulu, not direct TV, but Word of God. And so that’s what’s been amazing about going through this encounter, with a guy named Jacob. Really? And he’s been all over the map, literally and figuratively. He started down in Beersheba. He went all the way up, to Haran, and now he’s on his way back home.

I’ll catch you up. If you hadn’t been part of this. The guy literally leaves home, because his brother wants to kill him, and he goes. And he lives in Hiran, where he ends up not with one wife, but two wives. He’s got all sorts of, kids now. He’s got all sorts of issues. And God actually prospered him. God used him to grow the net worth of his father in law. And then God also used him, gave him the ability to actually grow his own net worth. And so now he’s moving all of what he owns back down to his hometown. He wants to go home after 20 years and everything that he’s experienced. Even along the way, he’s made peace with his father in law.

But we’re kind of in the middle of watching this transformation of what really is weighing the heaviest on his heart. He really wants to make peace with his twin brother, Esau, the brother that he stole the birthright from, the brother that he stole the blessing from before he fled. And now here we are, 20 years later, and he’s on his way back. Last week, Pastor Ben, talked to us about how he was preparing for this moment. He’s preparing to meet his brother. You imagine not seeing a sibling that wants to kill you after 20 years. Just how apprehensive you would be. And so he comes up with this plan that he’s going to send all of these gifts on ahead of him.

And, as Ben said last week, he literally had $600,000 worth of livestock. That’s what it’ll be worth today. He sends a check for $600,000 in the form of livestock to try to appease his brother. He’s trying to pay him off. He’s trying to. He’s trying to hope and pray that this restitution will work, and it’ll ultimately lead to reconciliation. And this is where Ben left off last week, because we learned that he himself spent the night in the camp. So right before this, what he actually did is he took his estate and he divided it into two camps. So he sends one wife and one mistress and X amount of kids this way, one wife, one mistress, an X amount of kids this way.

And he completely divides it in half because he hears word that Esau, his brother, is not only coming to meet him now that he knows that he’s on his way back home, but it happens just to be bringing 400 other men with him. He’s not coming alone. He’s not coming with just a dozen. He’s bringing 400 other men, which that can be a little intimidating, right? That’s like when people bring too many people to the family dinner. And you didn’t know when you run out of food. I mean, 400 men, 400 men. Not such an army. Folks like I would be shaking in my boots.

He knows Esau is stronger. He knows that. That he’s that he’s a skilled warrior. So, of course, there’s a lot of fear in this guy’s heart. And wouldn’t you know, going into our our first verse for this week, that that same night Jacob got up and he took his two wives, his two female servants, his 11 sons. He crosses over and he had sent them across the stream, and he sends over all of his possessions. So again he divides them up into two camps. And the very next verse means he was left alone.

I want you to think about that for a moment. When was the last time that Jacob was left alone? You have to go back to chapter 28, in a place called Bethel. And he was all alone, and all he had was the shirt on his back and a staff. And this was when he was on his way up to Haran, because that’s where his parents told him to go. You need to go. You need to spend some time with your uncle. Your is going to help you find your wife ends up with two and that was the last time he was alone. And while he was alone, if we flashback, he has a dream of a stairway resting on the earth. Reaching top to the heaven and angels of God are ascending and descending.

God showed up to Jacob the last time he was alone, and in that moment God made promises to him. Part of the promises were this I will not leave you, and I will protect you. So you don’t need to worry about your brother killing you. I will protect you. And then he said, you will eventually return home. You will return back to the land that you came from. He heard God say that he built an altar to God to worship him for giving him those promises. And again, as time goes on and as memories begin to fade, and some times what happens is God makes a promise and we begin to doubt it. And we begin to let fear cease our heart and our life. And so while he’s left alone, it says, a man wrestled with him till daybreak.

This guy can’t get a break. Kenny. This was like going to be one of the biggest nights of his life. He knows he’s going to come eyeball to eyeball with his brother Esau the next day, and he wanted to be alone. And when, you know, somebody comes to him and messes with him and it’s a physical altercation. Now before you have too much pity on this guy, let me just explain to you how devious and how much of a coward this guy actually is, because when he divided his estate in his family into two, he put them on the front line. He knows that Esau is coming from a certain direction, and so he literally put his family in everything that he owns. And front of him crosses over a body of water so that he’s preserving his own life. And you know what that’s called? Being a coward. That is not what God has called any man or woman or leader of a home to do.

You don’t ever put your spouse or your kids in harm’s way. And here he is panicked, stressed, not sure that this is going to be the last night that he’s going to be on the planet of Esau is just going to come up to him as soon as he sees them and just run a sort through them and kill them. And a man comes and wrestles with him. It’s kind of interesting when you think of our world, the struggles that we face. As Ben talked about how many people are really worried and stressed out about what’s going to happen in the election. People on both sides in two different camps. Isn’t that interesting that if this person is elected or this person is elected, that the whole world is going to blow up and the whole world is going to be turned upside down.

And for a moment, can I just talk to you? Those of you that are from the next generation coming up, specifically the Gen Zs, because the millennials, you guys are older now, the Gen Z and the amount of stress and animosity and the things that you see played out on social media. Number one, it’s not fair to your generation to have to live in the time that you do and to see and to experience the stuff that you’re experiencing in an election cycle. But number two, hold on to Jesus, okay? He’s been through this before. In fact, God’s been part of elections for a very long time, and he can see his people through any and every circumstance, including the circumstance that we’re going through. See our faith and hope and trust is in the one true God. And our mission from God is to stay focused on what he has for his church to do.

I mean, come on, can you not get excited about what’s going on around here? We got a baptism of Jim this morning. Then we got a whole new member class coming in. I think some of you take a nap during the video announcements, so I don’t want you to miss this, but think of this. 60 people for over two weeks went down to a church in Warren and updated and painted that place so that homeless people, 100 homeless people don’t have to freeze this winter giving up of their time. I think that’s absolutely incredible.

And I don’t know what you’re doing Wednesday morning, but my plan is to wake up Wednesday morning and to ask God what he has on the agenda for me and what he has on the agenda for this church. Because we got a lot of things going on here at Shepherd’s Gate, and we need to keep moving into the future, because every day that Jesus doesn’t come back means it’s another day that Jesus is calling somebody else to faith and calling somebody else his own and bringing them into his family. That’s what our focus should be. Amen. But I’ll tell you, sometimes times are tough. And even with all the years that I’ve been here at Shepherd’s Gate, even the last several years that I’ve had the privilege of being the lead pastor, I haven’t always agreed with God with the direction that this church has gone. Sometimes things have happened here and I’m like, God, I told you what you should do.

And I told you the order in which you should do it. Like, why did you put me here in this position if you didn’t want me to influence that direction? I’ll give you one prime example. It was a few years ago. There used to actually be two houses, two garages and two bull barns right in front of our property. Some of you remember that, okay? Some of you were brand new. You had no idea that that was even there. And for 40 years, this church prayed that one day, God, would you give us that land? And the remarkable part is the lady that was still living there, her husband had passed away. She told us before she passed away, I want Shepherd’s Gate to eventually have these last two lots. They owned all of this used to be farmers. They owned it all. And over a series of of years they sold bits and pieces of it to our church as our church continued to expand and grow. But then she passed away and the executor of all of her estate, when we approached the executor, and we thought that we were just going to rightly come in and buy the property, ended up selling the property to somebody else.

And it was this place called dairy Queen. And I was so angry. You have no idea. I screamed at God. I’m like, God, this is ridiculous. Why in the world would you allow this to happen? I don’t think our church even knew how far back the property went. Dairy Queen I will never eat at a dairy Queen again. It is only Baskin Robbins for me. What are you doing up there, Howard? Why would you allow this to take place? Why would this even happen? I mean, I would go out there and I would literally walk around that property. I would do like my own. Jericho March 7th times and nothing budged. Nothing ever changed until several months went by when we thought we had already lost it and we were just going to have to become good neighbors to dairy Queen, one of our members.

God worked through one of our members who’s in commercial real estate, and he saw that the properties were back on the market because the person still didn’t tell us that the properties would be available. And so we went to our church council on some of our key business leaders at the church. And between the two groups, they formed an LLC and they made an offer on this property. And in 30 days we closed and we’re given the keys to this property. And it’s crazy because we waited nine months to 12 months later, we ended up saving $250,000 right? And that’s what I’m talking about. Like, sometimes we just really don’t understand the way that God works in the way that he moves intricately through our lives and even through our church to put us exactly where he wants us to be. I’m telling you this because today, as you heard right after this service, we’re going to go into the former worship center.

We have a really important meeting because God has showed up again, and there’s some new development that’s taking place with our Faith forward campaign. And if you call this place your home, it is so important that you’re here. Let me just tell you, we are not live streaming it, and we’re not live streaming it on purpose because we want you to be here. And this is a beautiful part. You can’t see that you need to be home to watch the Lions game, because the Lions don’t play until 425. This is also important. It is a 30 minute meeting. I’m going to do a presentation. We’re going to close in prayer. We’re not going to take any questions or answers. In fact, we’re going to give you a whole week to process it.

You can come back next Sunday and ask all the questions you want. I’ll stay here all Sunday afternoon, except for when the Lions are on and answer all of your questions. Then you’ll still have another whole week to process again and pray. So normally what takes place in one week is actually taking place over two weeks this year at our church, so don’t miss. Here’s what the text continues to say. The man saw he could not overpower him, so he touches the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. Man, you just feel this physical struggle taking place, the man said. Let go, for it is daybreak. Hey, we’ve been wrestling for a long time.

Why are you so stubborn? Why are you still holding on? Why have you not just relented? And Jacob, being the stubborn mule that he is, I will not let you go unless you bless me. He knew there something special about this man. He knew something was happening in this moment. And this was a huge pattern of Jacob, this man. I want you to listen to this. He looks at Jacob and he says, what is your name? Now put a pin in this, because this is really important. We’re going to come back to this in a moment because he tells him, my name is Jacob. The man says, your name will no longer be Jacob but Israel, because you have struggled with who?

And with humans and have overcome. God showed up again. God’s the man. God’s the one that’s been struggling and wrestling with Jacob. Jacob again in one of his most darkest, awful moments, willing to sacrifice his family and save his own hide. And the God of the universe, the God that created them, the God that called him, the God that has seen his devious life and all the things that he’s been through still loves him enough to come to him and meet him in probably one of his greatest moments of need. Here’s the crazy part about Jacob is wrestling is what he’s been doing his whole life. In fact, you read in the scriptures his mom says that that when he and his twin brother were in the womb, that they were wrestling together, that she could feel the tension. And when she was giving birth, it was Jacob that was holding on to the heel of Esau.

They couldn’t even be born without fighting. That’s crazy, isn’t it? He wrestled. He fought with his father, Isaac. He for sure, because we’ve been going over this last several weeks, was in constant fights with his father in law, Laban, over who he should marry, over how to divide up the property and who’s deceiving who. And now we get to this moment in his life where he’s ultimately wrestling relentlessly, refusing to give up Almighty God. So let me ask you this morning, you have a wrestle with God. Yes. You ever get so angry at your life circumstances that you don’t know what else to do but to scream out, I got so just kind of two thoughts when it comes to this. And some people say we should we should never scream out at God and we should never, you know, tell God how we really feel and he’s sovereign.

He’s going to do what he wants to do, which is all true. But in the same token, God actually invites us to come to him to lay our burdens at his feet, to tell him how we really feel about things. Because here’s the thing. Here’s the truth. God has big shoulders. God has been dealing with humanity since the beginning of time. God already knows our deepest, darkest sins, and he knows our deepest, darkest struggles. There is nothing we can actually hide from God. And sometimes life throws us curveballs. Sometimes we go through circumstances even with the best intentions. Even though we pray and we say, God, I want to do your will, and I want to walk in your way.

And I’ve sought other people out there that are Christians. And and this is what they’re telling me to do. And God, I just don’t understand why I’m not getting an answer to my question. God, I don’t understand why you’re not healing my loved one. God, I don’t understand why this keeps happening in my life over and over and over again. Or God, why did you allow this moment over here in my history to even take place? And we begin to fixate on that and wallow in that, and it drags us down. And of course, here comes the devil with all of his tricks to just get in our ear and tell us that’s because he doesn’t love you, because he’s too busy.

That’s because he’s not really real. That’s because you have to figure out life on your own. And that is absolutely not the case. I can tell you my timeline of wrestling with God. One of the first times that I remember there was a major fight was when I was a junior in high school, and I started having this sense that God was calling me into full time ministry, and then God did. Which was more painful was other people were coming to me and telling me that I should really pursue full time ministry, and I would go into my bedroom at home and I would scream at God, God, you do not want me to be a pastor. You do not want me to be around people you don’t understand. You got the wrong guy.

I took a personality assessment, and my personality assessment doesn’t line up with who people should have. Is their pastor like, they’re usually like, plump, lovable, teddy bear type people. I’m not a plump, lovable, teddy person type person. God, this doesn’t make sense. Just let me go into business. I’ll go into business and I’ll make a bunch of money, and I’ll donate as much as you want to the church, or I’ll be in leadership positions in the church, or I’ll do this, or I’ll do that. God, trust me, I know better than you. This is not going to work out if I go into this field. And gracefully and patiently, he led me to a Bible college in Minneapolis. And what’s so crazy is that three years later. I had worked my way up the ladder of a hotel chain called Marriott. Anybody familiar with the Marriott chain, and they saw leadership potential in me and they said, Tim, we really feel that that you would be a strategic part of helping move our hotel chain into the future.

And so we want to actually send you to Monterey, California. We’re going to we’re going to pay for your condo. We’re going to give you a car. We’re going to give you a great salary. And this is just the first step. We’re going to make you and an assistant out there. And we’re going to see where this leads. And it could take you all around the world. And if you know me, I’ve always been about world missions. And I was like, maybe this is God’s plan for me. And so I went to this place called triple A, where they used to give you a paper maps you use. Anyone remember that? And they used to do things like triptychs where you got where you got to do it, and they would highlight it for you.

I mean, let’s be honest, GPS has ruined our lives. The passenger that used to be their job, the copilot would have to go through the map and the triptych. Now all the person sitting next to you does a scroll on their phone. How boring. I miss those days. So I went to triple A and I got a map of California, and I put it up on the wall of my apartment and I circled Monterey and I’m like, it’s only five minutes from the beach. I could be a surfer. I could live the California dream. Clearly. God, this is what you have for me. I went to the admissions office and canceled my classes for the next semester. I told all my school friends that this is what was going to happen. And then I came home and I met with a guy who’s done my taxes since I was 18 years old.

And he listened to me. He just sat there calculating everything, and I’m telling him every reason that I should go to California, every reason. So he couldn’t argue with me. And when he got done and he put it in the folder, as he always does, and he hand it to me, he looked me in the eye and he just said this one simple thing. He said, is that why you went to Minnesota? And that’s all I needed to hear, because I went out into his driveway and I sat in my car and I sobbed my eyes out, and I remember beating the steering wheel saying, God, man, I don’t want to go into this. Here I am. Don’t clap. Don’t clap because I’m not the hero.

But that’s what God does. I told some of you just a few weeks ago, when we were preaching a message about the girl that I was dating before my wife, and I was convinced she was the woman for me, I was convinced that that who was God wanted me to marry. And I remember when our relationship blew up and going right into Thanksgiving and Christmas and I thought my life was over. I remember yelling at God, God, come on. I went into church work. Why mind? Am I going to be single two for the rest of my life? Do you have any love for me? So earlier this year, when both of my boys had to go into the hospital ten days apart because of appendicitis, and walking those halls and remembering my mind going numb and being like God, come on, help me.

Where are you? How am I going to get through this? And yet, each and every time he just gently, lovingly leads and guides us, doesn’t he? Want you to see what God does with Jacob. It’s absolutely powerful. I want you to think of his name. His parents literally named him the deceiver and the trickster. Because of his behavior in the womb and because of how he was born, so much so that after he stole his brother’s birthright and the blessing his brother, even turned to the parents and said, yep, you named them the right name, which is always fun when your siblings point that out, right? Yup. He’s the troublemaker. Yup. His whole life. His whole life, this has been the label that he’s carried. Think of this. And now God, because he has the ability to do this, changes his name and more importantly, he changes his identity. He gives him a new identity. From now on, this is what you are going to be known for, not for your fallen sinful nature, not for your fallen sinful ways, not for all the mistakes and sins that you’ve committed in the past.

Today starts a new day. Today begins a new adventure. Jacob even turned to the sky and said, please tell me your name. God replies, why do you ask my name? Which, if you read the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, if you read the interactions Jesus has with people, more often than not, when they ask him a question, he asks them a question back. Why is that? God’s pattern in scripture? Because he wants us to wrestle with with our minds. He wants us to wrestle with the situations that we’re in. And as he’s asking this question in his sovereign grace and mercy, he still holds out his hand and he blesses Jacob. Did Jacob deserve to be blessed? What has Jacob done up to this point that would that would deserve any type of blessing or favor from God, the coward that’s by himself, hiding behind his family?

He’s done absolutely nothing. Jacob, realizing the significance of the moment and the grace that’s been extended to him, he called the place Peno, saying, it is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared. His life was spared by God, and he knew once again that God would protect him, that God would follow through on his promise for his life from beginning to end, no matter how many times he was going to screw up along the way. It’s amazing because if you would have just waited on God and done things according to God’s timeline and plan, he would have had a whole lot more or less stress in the life that he lived. And it’s interesting when you put a mirror up to our lives, when you look at this text through through the life that you’ve lived, the life that I’ve lived, how many times I’ve brought more stress into my life because I got impatient with God, because I thought I had a better plan, that God. I thought I could dictate.

These are the things that actually should take place, and this is how they should take place. And God, you must not understand how things work. You must not have enough time for me. And yet, even in those moments, he still comes to us and he wraps his arms around us, and he brings us closer, and he reminds us once again, hey, remember, I’m the one that knit you together in your mother’s womb. I’m the creator. I’m the one that sent my son Jesus to this earth, to walk this earth, to experience everything that you experience. Oh, by the way, Jesus is the one that on the night he was betrayed, went to a garden where some of his closest followers who ended up falling asleep and Jesus went on a little bit ahead and he was way he was alone and he was praying. And if you look the word up in the text, the level at which Jesus is praying to God, but we’re literally means wrestle, because what was it that he was asking God in that moment? Man, I know what’s ahead. I know what next day brings. I know the turmoil. I’m going to go through the beating. Yes, it’s one thing.

The crown of thorns. Yes, that’s another thing. Getting spit on in mock. Yes, that’s another thing. But when all the sins of the world have to come upon my body and I have to absorb, all of humanity sinned. Oh, man, can you take that cup for me? Is there another way? Is there a different way to do this? And in that intense agony and pain, as he’s praying and he’s crying out to God and he’s wrestling with God, somehow he’s able to still say these words, not my will, but yours be done. And in that same moment, here comes Judas, the betrayer. And we are so much more loved by God than we will ever realize. I’m completely convinced of that. But we are more fallen in sinful and prideful than we ever really want to admit. What you see happening in this text is God stripping Jacob down to the bare bones, literally every area of his life, every time. This is all he’s known as.

I got to wrestle and I got to be a deceiver, and I got to be in control, and I got to call my own shots. And you don’t understand. I have to control my destiny. And God says, no, you don’t know. You don’t. And we will wrestle here all night. Jacob. I’m here all day, all night. Whatever is going to take to finally get you to a place to surrender to me. Let go, let go! Jacob, just as he says to us to let go. It’s interesting. As the sun rose. And he pass by this place, he’s limping now. Think of that. He’s limping because God Almighty touched him. I want you to think of that in view of what we are going to do here in a moment, as we receive Holy Communion. When we don’t come to the table of the Lord with our chest puffed up. And look how good of a Christian I’ve been this week, and look at what I gave, or look at what I served, or look how I didn’t sin. Oh, we come to the table of the Lord folks this morning limping. We come to the table of the Lord recognizing our fallen sinful nature.

In fact, our custom here is that we bow our heads and we close our eyes. And the reason we do that is because that is your moment to wrestle with God. That is your moment to come clean before the God of the universe, the creator, and to confess all your sins, not just some of your sins, and to let God take that nature and to take those thoughts and that attitude from you, and to say, no, no, no, no, it’s not about you. It’s not about what you think it is. It’s about what Jesus has done for you. But I’m going to give you a new name. I’m going to give you a new purpose. I’m going to give you a new life on this earth. So when an election comes and goes, you don’t have to be stressed out or worried when circumstances come into your life.

Yes, there may be painful times, but guess what? You know who God is and you know that he’s on the throne and you know the promises that he has given you and every follower of his, that he will see you through any circumstance that you face in this life. Go back to the Lord’s Prayer. Think of the words that you play. Pray your kingdom come. Second part even harder, isn’t it? Your will be done, not my will. God. And that’s our prayer for you today. If you’re here and you don’t know Jesus, that in this moment that he’s speaking to you and he’s letting you know he sees you and he’s pursuing you, and he wants a relationship with you.

For those that are here today and you’re running from God, and you filled your life with every other thing you could possibly fill it with, and maybe you’ve been successful and you’ve built up this beautiful life and net worth, but you realize inside your empty God sees you. He knows you and he’s pursuing you. God has not stopped working on any human heart that is still on this earth. And today we get to celebrate what Jesus has done for us as we receive his body and his blood. And once again, he washes over us and he forgives us of all of our sins. Amen.